Guys and Dolls
by Ms.Teragram
Summary: Lassiter prepares for an unusual date.


**Story Title**: Guys and Dolls  
**Rating**: PG-13 for kink references  
**Pairings**: Shawn, Lassiter, Gus, O'Hara, OT4  
**Warnings:** leather, kink, and bdsm references  
**Summary:** Lassiter prepares for an unusual date.  
**Notes: **written for psychicvanity as part of the Sweet drabblethon. The prompt was: OT4 (Lassiter, Juliet, Gus, Shawn) - They are Lassiter's dolls. I see this scenario as AU, although I suppose that given enough time, and the proper incentive, Shawn could talk Lassiter into almost anything.

***

Lassiter stepped out of the bathroom, still towel-drying his hair, and walked naked into his bedroom.

_Got to get a move on_, he thought, glancing at the digital clock on his dresser. _They'll be here soon and I still have to get dressed. _

He pulled on a pair of briefs and socks then dragged a heavy leather bag from under his bed and deposited its contents on the comforter.

O'Hara had said 8:00, but she was picking up Shawn and Guster first, and that could turn 8:00 into 8:20. He'd insisted she pick him up last. He refused to wait in the car while Shawn took twenty minutes trying to decide which outfit to wear. Lassiter didn't understand Shawn's preoccupation with his clothing choice. It was all going to come off by the end of the night anyway. Lassiter smirked. You wouldn't find him keeping people waiting while he tried on four different shirts. Of course, to be fair, he didn't have as many outfits to choose from as Shawn did.

He went to the closet and pulled out his leather police uniform. He'd washed it by hand after the last event. He'd had too; Shawn had gotten several different body fluids on it, and he'd been surprised at how much of a sweat he'd worked up wearing it. He'd say this for leather—it certainly was warm. He opened a bottle of Lexol conditioner, dampened his polishing cloth and began to condition the shirt and pants. He'd really come to love the smell of leather, and to associate it with sex in a way he'd never done before. Once the clothes were supple and shiny he put them on. It was definitely tighter than a real SBPD uniform would be, but otherwise the cut was the same. He'd started off his career in a uniform very similar, albeit one made of a cotton-polyester blend. He transferred his police belt, minus his sidearm, to the leather pants. Personally, he'd have been fine bringing his Glock along, but for some ridiculous reason it was against the rules of the club to bring in firearms. Lassiter snorted. As if every member there didn't have a dozen other potentially deadly weapons within arms reach. He stepped into his boots and gave them a brief polish—Shawn could finish the job later.

Lassiter stepped back to inspect the effect in the mirror.

_Not bad. Good, in fact._ He looked strong, masculine, and not at all as ridiculous as he'd feared he would when Shawn had picked it out for him. He never had been much for dress-up, unless you counted his uniform. Or Civil War re-enactments. Or undercover assignments. Okay, who was he kidding? He loved dressing up. He just hadn't connected it with sex before.

He'd never considered himself to be a kinky person. Sure, he found uniforms and guns attractive, but who didn't? Actual fetishes, however, had just seemed silly. But he'd come to realize there was no way to predict or explain what was going to turn someone on. His current relationship was a case in point. When he'd first met Shawn his attraction had been suppressed under a weight of annoyance and disapproval he could barely keep in check. Apparently Shawn found that hot. When they started having sex it had been strictly vanilla, unless you counted the times Lassiter slammed him into walls at the station. Shawn soon made it clear that he _was_ counting those times, and would like to continue in a similar, albeit more sexual, vein.

Lassiter had laughed. "You want me to what? Surely you can't be serious."

"I'm totally serious," Shawn said, not cracking a smile. "And don't call me Shirley."

This had led to some very satisfying aggressive sex. Their argumentative dynamic at work had translated into light verbal humiliation in bed, which had in turn led to bondage and then to spanking.

When Lassiter smacked his ass, Shawn had howled a loud "Ow!"

Lassiter had been immediately concerned. "I'm sorry," he said, "Did I hurt you?"

"Yes." Shawn responded. Then, flashing his dirtiest grin, he added, "Do it again. Please."

Once, after a particularly prolonged session, Lassiter had complained of a hand cramp.

"If I get carpal tunnel from this Spencer, so help me," he'd said. "You're paying for treatment." Soon after, Shawn had bought him paddles of varying thicknesses and sizes. By the time Lassiter found himself in a fetish store buying a leather cop uniform, he couldn't have said for certain how it had all happened.

Likewise, he wasn't sure how they'd ended up becoming a regular foursome with O'Hara and Guster. It had been Halloween when Shawn had first talked him into driving to a play party in Ventura Country. He'd worn a leather Sherriff's outfit and a facemask that made him feel like the Lone Ranger and gave him a reassuring sense of anonymity. Shawn had worn leather chaps and a vest, although at some point during the evening his jeans and shirt had disappeared from beneath them. He should have known Shawn would end up half naked by the end of the night.

"This is a bad idea," he'd said as soon as they walked inside. "We should go." The event felt part costume party, and part Hammer Horror Film.

"No," Shawn insisted "At least stay long enough to get some new ideas." He'd craned his head around, watching people in costume, some of them having sexual encounters with one another on various pieces of medieval-looking equipment.

"What if someone recognizes me?" he hissed. _Not that anyone I know would go to a place like this._

"No problem," Shawn assured him. "The only people who might recognize you are _also_ superfreaky. It's mutually assured destruction."

Lassiter did not find that metaphor reassuring.

While he had been worried he might see someone he knew, he hadn't expected that someone to be Juliet O'Hara or Burton Guster. He'd always known his partner was a beautiful woman. She had hair like corn silk and her accuracy and precision at the gun range was damn hot. But seeing her dressed head to toe in a red PVC bodysuit, complete with horns and a tail, was a different thing entirely. He'd been unable to take his eyes off her and Shawn had finally joked that they were both giving her "the Care Bear Stare," whatever _that_ was.

Guster had been wearing what Lassiter was pretty sure was an actual Jesuit cassock. He'd known Guster was Catholic, but hadn't expected that would extend to-well, he couldn't very well call it the bedroom. The two of them had done a domination-seduction and flogging scene that had left Lassiter feeling shocked, offended, and more than a little intrigued. In retrospect, the three of them had probably arranged the whole thing amongst them. What had started off as watching had turned into helping, as O'Hara asked him to pass her various items lined up ominously on a side table. Meeting up at parties had turned into meeting up at O'Hara's apartment. From there things had taken a whole kinky turn that was entirely outside of Lassiter's sphere of familiarity, but surprisingly, not outside his comfort zone.

One thing that helped make it all seem normal was that it hadn't affected his work.

"How is this not weird for you?" he'd asked her during a surveillance detail. "You know, partners at work and then menage a four on the weekends?"

"You were sleeping with your last partner," O'Hara pointed out. "Wasn't that pretty much the same?"

"God no. Lucinda and me, that just kind of happened. And it wasn't like this." He grimaced. "Our work hours weren't as professional as they should have been. I think that's how Spencer blew our cover."

"Well, I guess I'm just very good at compartmentalizing my life," O'Hara said. "It helps prevent my work from seeping into my private life. And vice versa."

Lassiter thought of his livingroom, where a prominent place was given to a board outlining the cases he worked on during his off hours. In many ways, his sex life was a lot like his work life. His role was to be the dominant alpha male, setting and enforcing limits, and punishing the guilty. And both usually required outfits. Compartmentalizing wasn't a skill he had ever mastered, but it was definitely one he was going to have to try. He didn't want anyone at work ever knowing about that bag under his bed or what he did with its contents.

Lassiter glanced at the clock again then began to inspect the equipment he had laid out on his bedspread. He ran his hand along a black leather paddle, looking for breaks or wear, before putting it into his kit bag. He did the same for his wide tailed flogger, making sure none the points were torn. He quickly went over his bondage cuffs, ball gag, blindfold, and nipple clamps. Shawn referred to these items as Lassiter's toys.

_Toys._ Lassiter smiled to himself. As a boy he'd played with dolls—three of them. Big Jim was an action figure with a button on his back that enabled him to perform a karate chop. Miss Betsy was a doll he'd inherited from an older cousin because she was missing an arm—the doll, not the cousin. Young Carlton Lassiter had liked to imagine that Miss Betsy had lost her arm in the Civil War. The third was a Raggedy Andy, the brother to the more popular Raggedy Anne. Andy was a sailor. Carlton's way of playing with dolls was different from his sister's. He was the sheriff and they were his townspeople. His job was to maintain order, and keep them safe from harm.

As he finished loading his equipment into the leather bag it occurred to him that he'd subconsciously recreated a similar scenario with Shawn, O'Hara, and Guster. He felt protective of them, yet also provided needed discipline. It was what a sheriff, or a cop, did. Only instead of stepping in when Raggedy Andy or Big Jim tried to rob Miss Betsy's stagecoach, he was tying O'Hara into a suspension harness or monitoring Gus or Shawn's trip through the various stages of subspace and back again. Shawn was especially reminiscent of Raggedy Andy when he was coming down afterwards—so relaxed that he seemed bonelessness and making about as much sense.

Of course he also realized that their similarity to his childhood toys was not something he could share with them. O'Hara would hear it as a sexist thing, and if he tried to explain about his desire to protect her, she'd interpret it was a denial of her ability to protect herself. He knew she could disarm and subdue a suspect in less than three seconds, but she was still his partner, and that responsibility didn't end just because she'd squeezed herself into a corset. He'd seen how some of the guys at these events looked at her. He suspected that one or two of them probably thought that anyone with breasts ought to be crouching meekly at their feet instead of leading her boyfriend around by a collar and chain.

Guster, the reasonable one of the group, was capable of understanding the comparison without taking it as a personal slight. But he was pretty sensitive about doll-related comments after Mr. Yang had written that she wanted to make children's dolls from his skin. It would be better not to bring it up. Shawn wouldn't freak out about being thought of as a doll, but he wouldn't shut up about it, either. He'd be subjected to an unending series of references to dolls-Cabbage Patch Kids, Rainbow Brite, My Little Pony, He-Man. Spencer could be a real Chatty Cathy sometimes. So the parallel would just have to stay locked inside his head for the time being.

The honk of O'Hara's car horn pulled him from his reverie.

_It's playtime_, Lassiter thought as he grabbed the bag and headed for the front door. He'd booked the St. Andrews Cross tonight. _This should be interesting_


End file.
